From the far side of the lobby of Steppenwolf Theatre in her hometown, Chicago, the former Muskegon Chronicle reporter knew she knew his face from somewhere.

She couldn’t remember where.

Maybe it was from South African playwright Athol Fugard’s “Master Harold ... and the Boys,” or the voodoo horror movie “The Serpent and the Rainbow.”

Maybe it was from ... wherever.

But somewhere.

Never one to shy from walking up to celebrities, she walked up to actor Zakes Mokae, and introduced herself.

Mokae, whose artistry often struck at the dark heart of Apartheid segregation in his homeland, smiled, and took time to talk.

So, years before, had “Roots” author Alex Haley.

The woman had done the same thing to Haley when she whom she spotted inside the Art Institute of Chicago.

Haley invited her to join him and some of his friends for dinner that night.

She declined.

It was her birthday, she told Haley. Some of her journalism friends -- from Chicago and Muskegon -- were throwing her a party.

At that party, she later related her close encounter with Haley.

Her fellow journalists responded like a rude Greek chorus.

“Idiot!”

“We love you, but what were you thinking?

“It’s Alex Haley!

THE Alex Haley!”

Go!!”

She had preferred, instead, to rehash memories of sitting around Visconti’s Tavern on Pine Street, and a spate of less than golden moments in Muskegon journalism.

Time marched on, en route to another chance meeting with a famous man: Mokae, a theater and actor whom most Americans would know by face but not name.

It was the early 1990s. The writer and the actor were in the Steppenwolf lobby. She, who for the last decade has lived in worked in Dakar, Senegal, was at the renowned regional theater with a former Chronicle colleague. The two were there to see a Steppenwolf production. Neither now can remember the title.

Mokae was at Steppenwolf with the South African music group Ladysmith Black Mambazo. They were re-mounting one of his greatest productions, “The Song of Jacob Zulu.”

The rest already has been told.

Zakes Mokae is gone. He died in September rom complications of a May stroke. He was 75 years old.

“I do remember meeting him!” the writer said Oct. 4 after she heard the news of Mokae’s death. “Well, another one who's "done his work, and left lots of good.”

Zakes Mokae in "The Serpent and the Rainbow."If most West Michiganians know Mokae at all, it is as the evil head of the Haitian secret police in American director Wes Craven’s 1988 “The Serpent and the Rainbow.”

Mokae’s line to Bill Pullman, “I want to hear you scream,” reminded people of the Nazi war criminal, played by Laurence Olivier in “Marathon Man,” practicing painful dentistry as he asked Dustin Hoffman, “Is it safe?”

Internationally, though, Mokae was renowned for his theater work, especially his teamings with Fugard.

Mokae was black, Fugard white.

Their 1960 collaboration, on stage, in Fugard’s “The Blood Knot” was followed by Mokae distinguishing himself such stage works as “Boesman and Lena,” “A Lesson from Aloes,” “Master Harold ... and the Boys” and “The Song of Jacob Zulu.”

Zakes Mokae, center, with Lonny Price and Danny Glover in "Master Harold ... and the Boys."Mokae won the 1982 Tony Award for “Master Harold ... and the Boys.” In 1993, Mokae was a Tony nominee for “The Song of Jacob Zulu.”

Plus, he got to meet a former Muskegon Chronicle journalist who treated him the same she’d done Alex Haley.

All is now recorded for posterity, in a blog that has gone on and on without naming one of its principals.